False Memory Syndrome
by Elemnestra Aethelflaeda
Summary: The shrinks wouldn't believe the truth if he ever told it. But even the truth that he believes, that he remembers, isn't real. Because his memories don't belong to him. Clone-fic.


_**Disclaimer: I own nothing anyone recognises.**_

**A/N: Spoilers for _Fragile Balance_. Again. I think I have issues. **

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_**False Memory Syndrome **_

The room is white, because such rooms stereotypically are. It also possesses the stereotypical padded walls, or at least walls that are less hard than is normal. There is a distinct lack of any sharp objects.

He knows that they watch him. He knows the cameras are there. He can sense their eyes, even if he can't see them (he ignores that sometimes he can feel them even when they are not there). The shrinks are too curious, always trying to figure him out, to determine what is wrong with him (he thinks there is too much wrong with him for it to be determinable).

They are always watching, waiting for him to slip and give away his thoughts, his psychoses, his secrets, his identity.

He knows that they're pretty sure – as sure as they can be, when the man had given a fake name he thinks the shrinks know to be a fake – that it wasn't a relative who signed him in. But there's nothing they can do to prove it. They don't know _his_ name because they weren't told. And when they had asked him he hadn't been in any state to tell.

When they ask now, he's figured out that he prefers being lost in the system. If he's not lost, then other people can find him too. Being accidentally lost is preferable, he thinks, to being deliberately stolen.

The shrinks don't agree. But they don't get a say.

He knows that he's crazy. He sees things that aren't, and remembers things that weren't. Sometimes he isn't sure what is a memory and what is happening and what is neither. He's getting better, he can tell. The shrinks can tell too, he thinks. But it's a slow process.

It has taken him weeks, in this place, to learn how not to shudder at the sight of a needle.

He still hasn't learnt how to stop expecting armed soldiers at every corner and behind each closed door, though he suspects it will take only time.

He doesn't know how to stop anticipating pain.

He doesn't know what the shrinks think about that. He knows they don't entirely understand what is wrong with him; precocious interns are told to try to figure him out. He doesn't know what they think he's been through, to get this bad – so bad that even _he_ admits it, he who would normally lie through his teeth. If the shrinks suspect his psychoses are mostly down to the superiors of the man who signed him in here, they don't say.

But he can guarantee that they don't know the agency that the man works for, that three-letter alphabet-soup shadow-agency. He can tell they don't know because they still ask about who sent him here, still want to pry into things that could get them killed if he told.

They wouldn't believe the truth, if he told it.

And even his truth - the one he believes, because he remembers it - isn't _the_ truth. His truth isn't real. He remembers it, but he never experienced his memories, because they don't belong to him. They were implanted. Artificial. True memories, but not true. Not for him.

Except they feel real. And even if he never experienced them, he remembers doing so, and isn't that what counts? Isn't it?

But if they were real, and he was sane, then people would believe the truth, if he told it. And he knows no one would. But potential belief or not, he doesn't want to tell – that hasn't changed, from his memories to his present. He's never wanted to spill his secrets, has always done everything to keep them. Mostly, he thinks he has managed to succeed (for a given value of "he", because which memories count, and which don't?).

He thanks – someone – that the truth roofies don't work on him the way they should. Freak of genetics and nature, Loki's mess-up, Thor's deliberate tinkering, the NID's fooling around – whatever has caused it, whatever it was supposed to do, it works to his benefit. True memories or not, he remembers how to take advantage of coincidental potentialities.

So he tells the truth, but ruthlessly exploits the loophole he has found by accident until nothing but loophole is left, and he cannot, even by choice, react as he is meant to react. He speaks in tongues, all that he has ever learnt, or picked up by accident, or unwillingly, whether he is fluent or knows only gutter-speak and obscenities.

If the words fit the question, that is how he answers, languages jumbled up and interwoven, making no sense even to himself. Sentences losing all syntax as the language in which it is spoken changes abruptly, he evades the questioning that can only bring trouble upon him.

He is avoiding answers that can bring nothing but trouble upon him and those that he believes he once knew. Even untrue memories are real to someone, and these memories should not be shared; the one true truth onto which he holds, to the aggravation of the long series of men and women in white coats. Whatever interpreters they commission, no one can make sense of what he speaks when under the influence.

Arabic, Ancient, Russian, Irish Gaelic, Goa'uld, German. Smatterings of Polish, Vietnamese, Abydonian.

He doesn't remember if he always knew the languages. But he remembers the words, and they serve their purpose.

The truth roofies aren't given up on, but the shrinks stop expecting them to be of any use.

If they ever do become of any use, what he speaks will sound as much gibberish as that to which the shrinks have become used. Government agencies, rogue cells or not, don't kidnap teenagers. They don't have secret agendas involving thoroughly illegal experimentation. And then those agencies certainly don't sign those teenagers into mental institutes – cynically, he thinks that was probably a mistake on someone's part.

When in possession of his own mind, or as close as he ever becomes, he speaks in crypticisms. Such comments are irritating but occasionally interpretable to those with patience, access to the internet, and some knowledge of trivia.

He keeps his secrets and his memories.

And he counts it a good day if he sees only people who are actually there.

**[-end-]**


End file.
